What intent is

Intent is the ability of the self to affect and utilise its energy field directly (rather than through constructs). Intent does not act, but creates and maintains tension (creates potential), so that the energy itself spontaneously tends towards a resolution. In a way, intent can be seen as content in a search of a corresponding form. A simple activity such as looking for a word may illustrate this. A person knows what s/he wants to express, but s/he is searching for the way (form) to express it. The tension so created is the result of one's intent. Once the word is found, it is experienced as a release (as if a light was turned on or a dam opened). Polanyi and Prosch summarise this process:

Heuristic tension in a mind seems therefore to be generated much as kinetic energy in physics is generated by the accessibility of stabler configurations. The tension in a mind, however, seems by contrast to be deliberate. A mind responds in a striving manner to comprehend that which it believes to be comprehendible but which it does not yet comprehend. Its choices in these efforts are therefore hazardous, not "determined". Nevertheless they are not made at random. They are controlled (as they are evoked) by the pursuit of their intention. These choices resemble quantum-mechanical events in that they are guided by a field which nevertheless leaves them indeterminate. They are therefore also "uncaused", in the sense that there is nothing within the possible range of our knowledge that determines or necessitates that they become precisely what they do become. (1975, p.176)

The wave energy from the soul can produce manifest effects due to the receptivity of the brain to scalar wave-propagations[1] and the sensitivity of the neural network to the chaos dynamics. The latter means that vast collections of neurons can shift abruptly and simultaneously from one complex activity pattern to another in response to extremely fine variations. In other words, neural activity is susceptible to so-called chaotic attractors that can amplify the minute fluctuations and affect an overall process although no exact neural path is determined. This is why intent cannot be specific and yet it can influence a general trend.

It is suggested that the effects of intent can be detected in experimental settings as the above mentioned readiness potential. Readiness potential is linked only to intentional movements, and not to reflex actions such as a scratching or pulling away from something painful. Libet also noticed that if his subjects had chosen not to actively participate in his experiments, readiness potential was very different, which is another indication that it is related to agency and intent (even if the decision to act comes later).

[1]. Scalar waves have magnitude, but unlike vector waves they do not have a specific direction.